Six packs of beverage products in bottles and cans have been made in the prior art by many different arrangements. The general commercial requirements for such packages are that the package be esthetically pleasing, stable and capable of being handled in normal store or supermarket marketing procedures, and capable of being easily carried and used by a person purchasing such packages. If the cost of making the multipackage is of little or no importance the prior art includes a great many multipackaging arrangements which would satisfy general commercial requirements. However, the cost of such multipackages is, more often than not, of paramount importance in the beverage multipackaging industry. As material and energy costs have increased, the problem of making such multipackages has become more and more complicated. The advent of plastic beverage bottles has also raised new questions relative to the making of commercially acceptable multipackages.
Blown plastic film materials have for a considerable period of time appeared to offer the desired economics for beverage multipackages and many attempts have been made to wrap or band a group of beverage containers with film materials. One somewhat successful arrangement has involved loosely applying a film band about a group of containers, then heating the film to cause it to melt against and about the container group, and then cooling the film back to its crystalline state. In such an arrangement the necessary use of heat energy can represent a substantial commercial disadvantage.
Other known arrangements have involved banding procedures where the film is in a stretched condition about the container group. Generally, those arrangements have involved small degrees of stretching with fillers, dividers, or handles being used to secure the necessary package integrity.
Highly stretched plastic film band multipackages appear to have been unsuccessful for a number of reasons. Firstly, the packaging art has lacked equipment or machines capable of applying a highly stretched film band in a greatly tensioned condition about a container group. Secondly, in the multipackaging of cylindrical containers with a broad highly tensioned film band disposed horizontally about the body portions of the container group there is a great tendency of the group to be rolled or slid from the desireable rectangular pattern into a diamond pattern or a generally circular pattern by the forces of the tensioned film band. The additional application of rigid dividers, handles or other elements has been tried to stabilize the package, but unless the additional elements have been secured to the end pairs of containers in addition to the center pair, carrying of the package by the center pair of containers has been unadvisable.